Quick Start

Washed Ashore the Island of Whiskers

This is a beginner quest that is designed to be played in 4 hours, but also comes in parts for shorter game sessions. This is both a modular adventure and a character creation substitute. Rather than taking a session-worth of time to just make characters, new players can create a character throughout the course of playing this adventure, gaining all the usual starting stats thematically during gameplay.

Character Sheet

Action Guide

Starter Quest

GM Tips:

Exploit Weakness

Min-Maxing and power-gaming are easy to do with Arcane Dominion's Training system, but do not get overwhelmed by players who suddenly power-spike after a Level Up or week of Training.  Remember that for every Max, there is a Min, and this game is balanced for teamwork to cover those bases.

Player Narration

Players may be eager to interrupt your narration or storytelling, this is good engagement and while it is easy to feel frustrated, remember to appreciate their enthusiasm. Politely tell them when you need to finish a paragraph, then address their ideas before resuming.

Rolling is Fun

While role playing is half the value of any TTRPG, rolling dice is the other half. Make sure players are aware of their agency over character progression. Training to roll lots of damage dice is rewarding, as is rolling high on Skill Checks. Make your players roll dice, and they should succeed most of the time.

Player Narration

Players may be eager to interrupt your narration or storytelling, this is good engagement and while it is easy to feel frustrated, remember to appreciate their enthusiasm. Politely tell them when you need to finish a paragraph, then address their ideas before resuming.

Make Your NPCs Your Own

Characters in these stories are left gender neutral for the most part, this is because many GMs will default to what they are most comfortable role-playing. Therefore please feel free to make any character your own and improvise any details you would like to add!

Cooperative Gaming

Playing as a team is mission critical, so if you see arguments and frustration reoccurring due to character incompatibility, it is your duty as Game Master to offer a solution that can keep the game running smoothly with players working together. In general, avoid serious PVP, and stealing from players.

Use What You Have

Expensive miniatures, terrain, and dice are nice to have, but not needed to play. You can play for free using the Public Showcase, one set of dice (free online), and some pencils and paper (character sheet available to print online). Use paper tokens to represent enemies; draw grids on paper to use as battle maps.

Scheduling

Most of the time, one person needs to start the dialogue on when to plan the next session. It is hard for the GM to always be responsible for scheduling, so be upfront with your players and tell them that their input and initiative in helping plan sessions helps keep the game running.

Online Play Guide

To play Arcane Dominion online, we recommend using the website roll20.net.

This website allows for TTRPGs to use an online grid that has many resources to build and customize encounters. Players can use paper character sheets, or use online character sheets. An online character sheet will be linked to this page at a later date.

Using a communication and streaming app like Discord or Zoom is also recommended, where the GM can share their screen to play the music of their choice.